Introduction. The Italian ‘Seventies. Tracing the origins of Italian modernity

A large part of the existing historical research on the seventies in Italy takes the category of crisis to define the country’s situation in that decade. During the seventies Italy experienced a multifaceted systemic crisis: institutional, economic, political, cultural, social, and religious. This interpretation is convincing, however, only if the term-concept ‘crisis’ is not solely adopted in its negative connotations and the seventies are not exclusively understood as an age of darkness (and violence). Indeed, the editors of this special issue strongly emphasize the need for using the word-concept crisis in a neutral way. In other words, they think it is necessary to return to the etymology of the word and to understand crisis as the punctum dramatis of a historical process, that is, as a watershed between two different ages. Thus, the Italian seventies should be understood as representing a fracture with the past and as a moment which paved the way towards a new era. The articles published in this special issue validate the need for interpreting the ‘shock’ of the seventies as the root of Italian ‘modernity,’ that is, the root of those phenomena and processes which contributed to shape present-day Italy.